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A Seattle Post-Intelligencer special report on how police here and around the nation fumble missing-person reports, originally published in 10 parts.
Wednesday, February 19, 2003 Part 3: Ex-deputy angry with police BREMERTON -- For months, Robert Mussman says, he and his family were robbed of the truth -- a dark truth about why his grandson never came home. That truth, he says now, was obscured by the obstinacy of authorities who ignored repeated requests that a simple missing-persons report be taken. Because of it, Mussman said, he and his family suffered months of needless anguish, and justice was delayed. The men who killed his grandson were eventually punished, but years later Mussman remains bitter. As a former deputy, he knows the job can be hard -- but his outrage is apparent when he recalls how Bremerton police disregarded his family's pleas for help. "If they can do this to one of their own," he said, "what are they doing to the common citizen? It tells me that it can happen time and time and time again." It began in late April 1996 with a missing jug of coins, several missing guns and a missing grandson. Brian Johnson was 21, a high school dropout already tangled in a web of drugs and theft when he stole from his grandfather's home. But the old man, a gruff former Marine and Kitsap County sheriff's deputy in the 1960s, couldn't give up on the boy he had taught to fish and to fix cars.
"He was like my shadow," Mussman said. "I was closer to him than my own sons." So when valuables turned up missing, Mussman gave Brian a break. He didn't call police, but instead called the apartment where his grandson was hanging out, telling a young man who answered the phone: "You better get those guns back or somebody's going to jail." When a week passed with no sign of Brian, Mussman called Bremerton police. He told them about the theft and that it wasn't like his grandson to disappear. " 'We don't have to file a missing-persons report,' " Mussman said the officer told him. " 'We've got outstanding warrants for him. We can find him a lot faster with a warrant.' " What neither police nor Mussman knew then was that Brian was already dead -- beaten, stabbed and dismembered by two meth addicts who dumped him off a remote road on a Mason County Christmas tree farm. Hints of a crime emerged a few days later. Mussman's daughter told him of a frightening phone call from someone named Troy, who claimed Brian was a hostage in a Bremerton apartment, and that there was a contract on his life.
Again, Mussman phoned police. He said officers told him that they were well aware of that particular apartment above a furniture store near downtown -- in fact, they'd recently been there to investigate a report of shots fired. The officers said they'd look for Brian there. With no word by the next day, Mussman again called police. When he learned the officers had not found Brian, he again asked that a missing-person report be taken. "They gave me the same song and dance," he said. Both of his daughters -- Brian's mother and his aunt -- had tried repeatedly to get the department to take a report, he said. They, too, were rebuffed. When summer passed and fishing season loomed with no sign of Brian, Mussman knew something was wrong. He and his grandson had never missed salmon season. But another call to the police brought only an officer who said a missing-person report "won't do any good." "I got mad and told him to get the hell out of my house," Mussman said. The next day, Mussman said, another officer showed up and apologized. She listened to his story about Brian, jotted down information in a notebook, and told him she'd file the report. "Finally, I thought they had taken it," he said. But they hadn't. In November, tree cutters found Brian's decomposed remains on the tree farm near Belfair, but Mason County authorities had no way to know who he was because they couldn't match the remains with a missing-person report and dental records that should have been on file with the state. The Bremerton police had it wrong about outstanding warrants. At the time, state and national databases did not automatically match information about wanted persons to information about unidentified bodies. With no ID, there was little homicide detectives could do.
"If you don't have him identified, how are you going to find out who killed him?" said Mike Foster, the Mason County sheriff's detective who worked the case The answer is often maddeningly simple: Get lucky. In late December, after seeing a brief news item in a local paper about an unidentified body in Mason County, Brian's aunt contacted Doug Wright, a neighbor who was also a Kitsap County sheriff's deputy. Foster remembers that Wright called him on New Year's Eve. After a round of calls to Brian's mother, Foster sent dental records from the body to Johnson's dentist for comparison on Jan. 7, 1997. Two days later, Bremerton police finally accepted a missing-person report and assigned a detective to look into the disappearance -- seven months after Mussman's first request. Even though Bremerton police knew by then that recovered remains were being investigated as Brian's, the report indicates that "no foul play" was suspected. By the time the report reached Mason County on Jan. 10, Johnson's dentist already had informed a detective of the "high possibility" of a match. Confirmation came four days later from a state forensic dentist. Foster, the Mason County detective, said Bremerton's last-minute report sounds like "someone was playing catch-up." "If you've made a decision not to take a missing-persons report, stick to it," he said. "Don't go back, then take the report after the body has been ID'd." In a written statement, Bremerton Police Capt. Craig Rogers said, "There could be various reasons why an officer may not take a report and it is usually based on voluntary actions of the person in question." Rogers said three officers involved in the case have since left the department for unrelated reasons. But after checking with two officers still on the force who met at different times with Mussman, Rogers said that the police were given no information that indicated Johnson was being held against his will. Rogers added that an officer who contacted Mussman determined that "it appeared that Brian was not returning due to the thefts he committed against his family." Yet, Rogers wrote, "(b)etter discretion would have been the asking of more questions concerning Brian's missing status and the taking of the missing person report." After the remains were finally identified, "things really started rolling" in the murder investigation, Foster said. Detectives went to the apartment Mussman first told them about and found evidence that someone had cleaned up a large amount of blood. Later they found witnesses who said that Lon Martin and his buddy, Keith Iaea, had attacked the young man there. The men, known meth dealers, were angry with Brian for trying to get his grandfather's guns back, Mussman said. As he was being hit and stabbed, Brian desperately called out for help -- and for his grandfather, his family would later learn. Martin and Iaea were convicted of murder and manslaughter, respectively, and are serving prison terms. "Fortunately, it didn't hurt the investigation," Foster said now of the absent missing-person report. "It just delayed it from getting started." But the case leaves Mussman with bad feelings about his local police department. He and his wife no longer contribute to police charities, and he still describes his anger in clipped phrases such as "gross negligence" and "violating the people's trust." He cannot forgive Bremerton police for adding to his family's months of anguish. "If it hadn't have been for a coincidence, who knows, maybe they never would have identified Brian," he said. "There certainly was no missing-persons report to establish a link." Webtowns INSIDE SEATTLEPI.COM
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